So, High and Low.
I watched it in two parts, Friday and Saturday night. I would like to have gotten completely through it in one sitting for my first time, but the spirit moved me too late on Friday for that to happen and I started nodding off at about the two-thirds point. So I had to back it up a little bit last night and carry on from there. But what a great movie, gripping throughout.
Afterwards, I watched the three extra features: the "making of" documentary, a 1981 TV talk show interview with Toshiro Mifune, and a more recent interview with Tsutomu Yamazaki who plays the kidnapper. All three are invaluable, but the documentary can be tough going due to challenges in following the subtitles. The English ones are often too light against a light background, and they have to share the space with another set of Asian subtitles that are hard-coded and can't be turned off. On my player you can move standard on-disc subtitles up and down on the lower half of the screen, but these are a challenge regardless. (On the movie they're great; I can move them into the border underneath the widescreen picture.)
I'll let this digest for a few days, then watch the movie straight through while listening to the commentary. I'm also adding King's Ransom, an Ed McBain book I'd never read, to my Kindle.
